Crush The First Butterfly
by Zagzagael
Summary: 4x18 continuation...


There was no relief.

And certainly not for the lack of trying. Another dead body, a compelled highway trooper drained to the point of hospitalization, and the discarded assortment of these and those she had helped herself to in an adult toy shop. (That, at least, had been a strange new experience once she got over her initial shock and then the subsequent disappointment.)

Now she was lying naked on her back on the sprung and broken-coiled motel queen, cheap pilled polyester coverlet scratching at her skin, paralleling the exact itch beneath her flesh. She groaned and ground her fists against her closed eyelids. She was bored and if this was immortality she was doing it wrong.

It was noon, in some city she had never been, smells and sounds so unlike Mystic Falls. The heavy humid air of the South was uncomfortable; it reminded her of the showers at the high school.

And if that didn't put it all into perspective she didn't know what would.

Aside from the immortal thing, the fangs, the blood drinking, the inhumanity, the trail of the fetching Original, the prey of the brothers miserable, the last living relative, the betraying bestie; she was, actually, a senior in high school. Prom, graduation, college acceptance letters. Was that all over for her? Bittersweet remnants of the other her? She didn't really want to return to it, and was effectively giving Mystic Falls her middle finger. And yet…that didn't feel good either. For a wild moment she considered texting Caroline, turned onto her belly and eyed the cell on the bedside table. She worried at her upper lip. It would be so easy. Return home, hit up Caroline and Bonnie, cook Matt a grilled cheese, grovel in an approximation of an apology at the Boarding House. She was certain Damon was still on her trail, but she knew Stefan would have returned home. A sad face and a sadder story, an empty suitcase on the bed and the ubiquitous journal opened to a tear-stained entry on his desk. She winced slightly, that wasn't fair.

She had, in these alone days, been practicing at feeling. Letting her emotions creep into her mind, breathing out slowly, cautiously, while her senses filled with humanity. It felt like memories of feelings and not the feelings themselves, but she was getting better at it. She could stop the moment before she drowned in a tidal wave of insane grief, could step sideways inside her mind to avoid the bull-like barreling rage, could linger for the count of minutes now to be lightened by the fragile feelings of love and joy, friendship and romance.

And then, she would slip like melting snow into a new place, a place of absolute longing, the place in which the itch had originated, the splinter in her mind, the place she was going more and more often the closer and closer she got to him.

The kiss had done this to her. Reduced her, expanded her. She wasn't sure. It was as if everything had narrowed to those few moments, his lips on hers, his hands, his body, the smell, the feel, the safety and the incredible danger. And in that narrowing an explosion, the disintegration of everything, all of it gone, blown away from the very center of her. She wondered if he had any idea what he had done, what he had focused inside her, how he had destroyed her. With himself, his essence, his being. His desire for Katerina, but in her mind, she ignored that part, it wasn't Katherine he was in love with, it was the doppelganger, Tatia, Katerina, herself, Elena. Her her her.

She had been tracking him for three days now. She had a pretty good idea that he was here, in this nothing town. And she knew that he was tracking Katherine. And in turn, Damon was tracking her.

But none of that mattered. Not anymore. She was choosing. She had closed and locked all the doors behind her, thrown away all the keys, erased the addresses from her contacts, forgotten the way back. She didn't want any of that anymore and when she did practice tentatively letting her emotions back in, she avoided regret and was surprised to find that without regret there wasn't much left in regards to the past, distant or near. Without regret giving shape to the emotional life of who she was before Jeremy's death, she couldn't feel, didn't want to return.

She wanted to move forward, into this new life, her new identity. And she wanted Elijah.

It was this desire that had her flicking the switch that controlled her humanity. On. Off. On. Off. Something in the kiss, in his embrace, had jarred her loose, had rocked her, a little earthquake inside her body, opening a crack within her heart and shaking her mind. Certainly he was beautiful, but so were Stefan and Damon. It wasn't that. It was something he represented, something that was him that wasn't others, something that sang in his voice her heart's song.

And she knew his secret now. It wasn't Katherine he longed for, it was the dead Katerina. Gone for centuries, even her ghost worn to the thinnest specter, a dim memory of a brief haunting. She, Elena, was closer to the doppelganger's essence than Katherine had been in five hundred years. She wanted to find the rich vein of that girl inside the cave of which she had become and mine its riches for him.

She wanted to be crowned Queen and he was her King.

* * *

He would let her find him. Before the evening had faded into morning, he would allow himself to be found. And with that decision, the smallest tremor shook through his mind and he paused to enjoy the feeling of it.

He was still half a day behind Katherine and that was okay. Like him, she too wanted to be found.

He had put Rebekah on an airplane back to Mystic Falls. Their parting on the small, grassy airfield was full of warmth and promise and he had pulled his sister into his arms and found himself moved to a point of tears. A place he hadn't been in a long, long time with any of his siblings. Whatever it was that she thought being human would do for her, it was such an open-hearted longing that something in her sincerity had injured him. A slight arrow in his heart, touching him deeply. He wanted her to be fulfilled. But he had serious doubts about her plan, her vision of that fulfillment. And now part of his mind was occupied completely trying to work out the details of her salvation. He fingered the phone in his pocket and considered calling Niklaus, asking him if his hunch was right; perhaps more than Rebekah needing to be saved by the cure she needed to be saved from herself. He sighed.

Katherine had given him the cure. The strange vial was in a leather pouch on a tie around his neck, tucked under his silk singlet, his button-down, his vest, and his suit jacket. Bespoke insulation for that secret from the world proper. He patted at it now, leaning back in the chair in the bar, thinking of Elena. Thinking of the aeons of hidden history he now was hiding, thinking of a love so destroyed and a lover so distraught that he was willing to sacrifice the world on his own sword. It was terrible. And somehow thrilling.

In a fantasy world devoid of repercussions, he could use one man's salvation to save another. He could use the cure on Elena, return her to her birthright, bring back the girl being devoured by a curse created by his own blood. He could revive the doppelganger by returning her mortality. Metaphorically stake the monster she was becoming, cleanse her of the impure blood, fill her with sunshine once again.

He wanted to do it; he realized this with a startling revelation, a stunning shock. And yet, he knew he couldn't, wouldn't. It wasn't her destiny. Elijah had survived and flourished over decades of existence that would boggle the minds of all the Philosopher Kings. His thoughts were the thoughts of very few others. His mind both a finely-honed weapon and a very precise machine.

He wasn't clear on all of the details as of yet, but he knew that an immortal sentenced to desecration, entombed with the elixir that would render him mortal, bodies piled like tinder at his bequest, all pointed to a larger endgame than his own thousand year pursuit of a woman. A woman who, in his darkest hour, he believed was just a singular figure killed at the hand of his mother and father in a time long forgotten by grave and scholar.

He picked up the tumbler of single-malt whisky and brought it to his lips. He inhaled the pungent peaty smell of it, could almost taste it before he drank it. He thought of Katerina, thought of the woman she had become, he closed his eyes and remembered Tatia, thought of her ignoble death and his mother's treachery. He thought of Niklaus and how his brother, too, was drawn like a magnet to the innocence and purity of a girl who would not have him. At least this time, it was a different girl; same obsession though, he mused.

But there was something in the riddle of human girl becoming vampire that he hadn't quite untangled yet. Both Elena and Caroline were wrapped in the cocoon of monster with the possibility of unfurling great wings of mythical proportions, a small moment that could be captured and encouraged. Caroline was, amazingly, master and mistress of her own metamorphosis but Elena was struggling. When he saw this with his own eyes it broke something loose inside his mind, inside his body. He was in yearning now, to help her shed this old skin. He wanted to breathe life onto her new skin, dry it, hold her, transform her, until her very bones were molded under his ministrations. He wanted to shape her into the glorious creature she could become.

He pulled hard at the whisky. Willing her to come to him.

* * *

She had sensed him out in the street, slowing and stopping and actually cocking her head, closing her eyes, and inhaling. She turned to the building, an intimate bar and she smiled. She smoothed the front of the small black dress, flipped her hair over her shoulder and stepped through the door into the dimly lit interior. Her gaze never wavered, she saw him instantly, at the back of the room, the pose of casual elegance that was so him. She moved as though drawn, pulled, beckoned.

At the far end of the room, his back against the wall, he watched her enter. And for a long, heart-stilling moment, he wasn't sure if it was Katherine or Elena. Or perhaps a vision fed him from his desperate and clouded imagination. Male recognition in the bar was high, the figure a whispered danger, the succubus, the nightmare made reality. He studied her face, wanting to see the differences, recognize the potential that the other had stripped from herself.

She approached and he felt the world tilt in his favour. He stood and found his balance.

She held out both her hands. He took them in his own and her bones liquefied. He brought her hands to his face, his mouth ghosting her knuckles. She bent towards him and he allowed this and she pressed a kiss just below his cheekbone. She wanted the opposite of vampire speed, she wanted to stop all the clocks and live inside his embrace, her face so very close to his. But he stepped back and pulled out a chair and she lowered herself into it, crossing one leg prettily over the other, forearms on the table, holding her own hands now. He indicated two drinks to the bartender who brought them instantly and she grimaced at the smell of the whisky but sipped at it, letting the liquid roll on her tongue.

He watched her, devouring her with his heavy glance, the tilt of his head an invitation to his jugular. "Find your way," he whispered.

His voice only in her ears. She reached out a long finger and traced the length of his throat, her eyes sliding shut in a small ecstasy.

On the table, between them, a cut-crystal candle holder, a flickering flame.

Elijah leaned towards Elena, seeking her reflection in the prisms of the glass globe. The girl, the woman, the vampire, the mystery, the lost and found love. He closed his eyes.

Elena felt the steady beat of Elijah's pulse beneath her fingertip, the heated flesh, a promise of ages, a vow of fulfillment, the skin of her redeemer. She opened her eyes.


End file.
